Smrt Lernins

I think we’ve finally found our pace for the year. Watch, I’ll say that and next week will end up completely bunk.

Captain Science finally got started with Grammar Voyage and is making fast work of it. He took the pretest for the book and made 100%. If I had any doubts about Michael Clay Thompson’s ability to teach materials in a way designed for retention, those doubts are put to rest. He read pages 3-45 in Grammar Voyage this week. He also took the pretest for World of Poetry, and got 7 of the 15 correct — not bad, as I’m pretty sure some of those terms weren’t in Building Poems. He also started reading The Black Stallion and watched the 1970s movie version of The Secret Garden for a little comparative media experience.

In history, he read pages 22-57 in Eyewitness: Ancient China and wrote a beautiful piece on the ancient Chinese irrigation device. He wrote a first draft on Tuesday and rewrote it on Wednesday. He’s showing good progress with essay writing, which makes me very hopeful about a good beginning with Essay Voyage in a few weeks. We’re wrapping up China next week and beginning ancient South and Central America.

Captain Science finished lessons 8-11 in Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra, including the cities of San Francisco, Gainesville, Palmer, and Racine, and a “Your Turn to Play.” He is doing great with negative numbers and beginning multiplying with variables. At his Math Olympiad meeting, he worked on probability. Captain Science likes to play the odds of situations, so that’s right up his alley.

In PLATO science, Captain S completed the Plate Tectonics packet, the pretests, and the mastery test. He did a second pass of the application of that unit, as well, because he missed a few important questions on his pretest. He did very well on the mastery test and, today, started working on mapping. He finished the main video, but didn’t get through the application, so we might log in and do that in the morning.

Finally, he completed another unit of KidCoder computer programming. He’s running into his first real challenges, however, so he and Officer Daddyman are going to sit down this weekend and go back over the lesson to make sure he’s got all the right foundations to continue.

Tank also had a busy week. He worked on the numbers 6-10, including tracing and writing the numbers, counting objects, and matching items to numbers. He also continued working on his letters, doing a second pass with A a and starting B b. He did workbook pages on circles and rectangles, did some tracing and cutting work, and together, he and Officer Daddyman made a robot using various shapes Tank drew and then cut out. They will be pasting them onto a colored background, so I’ll get a picture then.

Babypie mostly worked on screeching, which she’s mastering, and on slapping the dog, which we’re trying to stop.

Captain Science is motoring through some stuff!

This week, he completed the second unit of his PLATO Earth Science, watching the main video, doing the application activity, finishing the 7-page packet, taking the practice tests (and getting 100% on them), and then passing the unit test w/ a 90% (27 out of 30 correct). He started the third unit today and completed the video and the application activity.

Math is coming along nicely. Captain Science completed lessons 4-7 of Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra/Fred’s Home Companion, including the first set of cities (which this book has instead of the bridges in the previous books). He got all the problems in Adin and Elberfield correct! He’s also enjoying the Math Olympiad meetings, though he hasn’t completed the homework for next week’s meeting yet.

This week in history, he read about the first emperor of ancient China and about civil service careers in ancient China. He wrote his first history summary of the year, choosing to write about the civil service exams, their importance, and the risks of cheating. A valuable lesson, if there there was one. He wrote a first draft and a final draft.

In computer programming, he started his first actual piece of programming, a very simple application that pops up the text “hello, world!” He also reviewed the previous chapter and did a short test on those chapters.

I think he has finally finished The Secret Garden. He’s dragging it out, possibly because I also gave him It’s Perfectly Normal his week, a book on human development/puberty/sex ed. He’s alternating between the two and, as long as I don’t bring up puberty, seems perfectly comfortable learning about it. If I so much as say “hair under your arms,” he gets mad at me and says, “Can we change the subject?”

Tank also had a good week. He’s working on tracing, which is as much an exercise for his patience as for his hand. He worked on tracing shapes, identifying and writing the numbers 1-5, tracing big A and little a, and identifying words that start w/ an “a” sound. He finished a few pages in his workbooks on matching and comparing, as well. We’re hoping his friend Dimhibbins* will be joining us soon, perhaps as early as next week, for some additional pre-K fun!

Babypie’s big thing this week has been working out a nice balance of smacking and biting with Badge the beagle. She slaps him, he gently bites her, I intervene and fuss at both of them, they both look chastened, and as soon as I walk away, she’s smacking him and he’s nipping her. Honestly, since neither one is crying about it, I suspect this might be how they play. Puppy pals, maybe?

Today, we wrapped up our day with a “surprise” field trip to Fernbank to meet up with some friends and go back through the gecko and Sensing Nature exhibits more carefully, now that most of the public schools are back in session. Much less crowded! We blew some great bubbles, played with the sound exhibit (where I was faux-chided by my friend’s husband for saying “the magic of science,” because he says that’s the very thing I rant about on my blog), and looked at a backlit gecko’s internal organs through its translucent belly. All three of my kid came home with small plastic geckos (which only cost $.93 a piece before my 10% membership discount).

Anyway, that’s our week in review. Our Michael Clay Thompson stuff came today, so we can jump right back into that come Monday!

This has been a great week for working on projects and getting things done.

Our Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra and Home Companion books finally arrived. Captain Science completed lessons 1-3 in Home Companion. He also had his first Math Olympiad team meeting last night. I’m not exactly sure what he worked on or how well he did, but he enjoyed it, and enjoying math is a goal that all parents should want their parents to achieve! We’ll go weekly on Thursday, 6:30-7:30, which makes Thursdays a busy day for us!

Captain Science is still working on his Pantheon Project, writing the blurbs for the cards. We’re waiting on our next MCT curriculum to get here, so this is a good opportunity for him to focus on a little writing. He’s completed the work on the Greek pantheon cards and will go ahead and do the Roman pantheon next. Speaking of Rome, he also finished all the flash cards for Cesar’s English I, which we should have been doing this whole time, I realize now. It really cements the words in his memory. We’ll continue with the flash cards for the remainder of the book and with Cesar’s English II.

Computer programming began this week, too. It was mainly vocabulary and history of computers, but a nice foundation on which to build. We’ll be setting aside a two hour block every Thursday for Captain S to work on it. The final project of this semester is to program a game of Pong!

We’re finished the first unit in our PLATO Earth Science course. Captain Science passed the skill mastery test with 96%. He started the second unit today. We’re working on science four days a week, M/T/W/F.

Captain Science has almost finished reading The Secret Garden. It’s a nice change of pace from Where the Red Fern Grows, what with no dogs dying. He was excited to recognize one of the sentences from the first chapter, which has been used in Cesar’s English I as an example sentence! So far, not a peep of argument about the assigned reading, though. I think we’ll start The Black Stallion next week.

Tank got two new giant workbooks from Nana, who picked them up at Costco. He happily worked on them Monday through Wednesday, then declared yesterday that he was too tired to work on anything but drawing (which he did, quietly, in his room) and flat out refused to do anything but watch Go, Diego, Go with our brand new DOG!!!!! this morning. Last week, Tank and I discussed that if he were going to school at his old preschool, he’d only be going four days a week anyway, so anything he does on Fridays schoolwork-wise is lagniappe, anyway. On Monday, I think we’re going to do some more time-telling work, since he’s enjoying that and has grasped the concept of the small hand telling the hour.

Our 2010-2011 school year (our second homeschool year, for those of you who are newly on board the Starship McLernins) started smashingly!

This week, Captain Science mostly reviewed things and freshened up his memory a bit. He had a wonderful positive attitude, once again affirming our decision to homeschool. Even in his good year at public school, he was never happy like this. It’s like have my son back again, the happy and curious child who wants to learn!

Captain Science completed the fourth and fifth tries of the final bridge of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. He also did a page of math problems Officer Daddyman wrote up for him, so he could practice a few key concepts he hadn’t remembered as well. He’s ready to start Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra if the darn thing ever shows up! Come on, Mister Postman!

We began ancient China in history. Captain Science read two two-page spreads and one one-page spread in History: The Definitive Visual Guide, covering the Bronze Age, unification of China, and the first empire. He also read part of Eyewitness: Ancient China on the same topics. I’m looking for a good documentary on this era of China, so if you have any recommendations, let me know!

For language arts, Captain Science did eight sentences in Practice Town to make sure he remembered his grammar and usage. He completed chapters 16, 17, and 18 in Caesar’s English I (we only got about halfway through it las year) and today, started making flash cards of the stems and vocabulary words for later review. It was his first flash card experience, and while the tedium of filling out the note cards was frustrating, he seemed to agree that it made sense that the cards would help with memory. I don’t know if they’re making note cards flimsier these days, if I’m remembering them incorrectly, of if we just bought cheap cards, but these note cards we’re using are so flimsy. I might have to go get some nicer ones. He also did the final lesson in Building Poems again as a means of reviewing concepts.

He also did some logic work and read Where the Red Fern Grows, which he completed in just two and a half days (and cried off and on for the second half of the third day). Next book is A Secret Garden as his request, since it has a happy ending and a mystery!

We weren’t about to start science or computer programming this week, as we didn’t get internet access back at the house until Wednesday night. We’re having some issues with the PLATO science program. It won’t load on my computer! Hopefully we’ll get that ironed out for Monday.

Tank’s first week of preschool went well in most respects. He’s an eager learner…too eager, in fact! He has surprised me by expressing a fierce love for workbooks, which Captain Science never had, and I am woefully understocked on workbooks. Luckily, Nana brought two giant books over today, so I’ll have something for him to work on. He’s also worked on multiple pages from this free worksheet site. Every day, we have “block and trampoline time,” where he goes down to the playroom to build something and jump on the minitramp for a while. This gets him out of the room so I can focus on Captain Science for a while and keeps him from getting restless and bored. All in all, I’m glad to have him home. I just hope I can keep up with his expensive workbook habit.

Babypie is…fierce. Fierce and fiercely busy. I thought Tank might make homeschooling Captain S a little harder this year, but no; it’s Babypie. She’s up the cabinets. She’s up the piano. She’s up the gate. She’s upon Daddyman’s desk, hopping her butt up and down on his keyboard shrieking, because Tank is trying to play a Pencil Pals preschool game and she doesn’t want him to. In between schooling, she’s a joy, but oh man oh man. She adds an extra element of excitement to education! She’s also parroting everything we say, from “click” to “peaches,” perfectly. Time to start her with a list of vocabulary, right? Say “vexation,” Babypie! Say “disambiguation!”

I can’t complain about this week at all. THIS is the way all weeks should go! Slap-happy and snappy.

Patchfire’s post about honest reporting (about your children and yourself) reminded me that one of the requirements for homeschooling in Georgia is that I must write an annual summary or report on what we covered this year and on Captain S’s progress. They can’t require that I give them these reports, but I have to write them and then hang on to them for three years. Record-keeping isn’t my area of supreme excellence, of course, but that’s where the blog will come in handy. All I have to do is refer back to my weeks and weeks of Weekly Reviewins and voila! I shall have all the information I could possible require!

All the information on Captain Science that I could possibly require, that is.

Captain Science isn’t the only one who started homeschooling this year. This year, as my blog subtitle indicates, has also been an educational process for me. No one requires any sort of report on what I’ve learned, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the time to assess it. So, what has Smrt Mama McLernins learned about homeschooling (and herself) this year? What did I learn about being a secular classical homeschooler?

1. Color-coded schedules: what works and what doesn’t. Our color-coded schedule was a great idea in theory, but didn’t work out so well in execution. Too tightly scheduled, not enough time for transitions, and not enough flexibility for Captain Science. He needs more control over his order of activities. Next year’s schedule will still be time-blocked, because that really does help us get through our day in a timely manner, but it will be color coded into “core subjects,” “electives,” etc. and Captain Science will be able to choose the order in which he does his work, and more transitional time will be provided. For example, on Mondays we’d have three one-hour blocks for “school work,” separated by 15 minute breaks, followed by a half-hour lunch, another one hour block of work, then piano. Tank’s schedule would be broken up more and be in shorter blocks, with synced lunches.

2. We had an unacceptable dearth of hands-on stuff. We did so little of this and I really regret that. Projects, crafts, etc. need to be pre-planned and scheduled into our week. Other than writing samples, we have very little to physically show for our school year. No fridge art, no dioramas or whatever to display. This simply will not fly, especially next year, when my artsy little Tank is homeschooling with us. We need specifically blocked-out times for arts and crafts and we need to integrate a physical component into our history lessons. I don’t think we need to make sugar cube pyramids or anything like that, but we do need to find some more hands-on methods of doing lessons.

3. Captain Science owns his work, not me. I am one damn impatient woman. Impatient for Captain Science to get through his work quickly, impatient for him to do it the right way the first time, impatient for him to put in maximum effort rather than half-assing it. On Dawdlin’ Days, it’s all I can do to not just scream “OH MY GOD, just finish your dang WORK already!” at him, whilst running around and tearing at my hair and possibly taking up chain smoking. Ultimately, I’m not the one who controls how quickly he finishes the work. I’m not the one who controls how well he finishes the work. I can set time limits and repercussions for violating those limits. I can set standards for the work and have him redo it when he doesn’t meet those standards. At the end of the day, though, I can’t make him do something in a timely manner or with a high level of quality…or at all. Deep breath. Release. Provide guidance. Provide boundaries. Provide repercussions. Trust him.

4. Broad but shallow or narrow but deep? Did we spend too little time on each of too many subjects at a time? Did we spend too much time on too few subjects? Officer Daddyman and I have discussed this and in looking back over the past year, I see that we had periods of both. We started out with too much focus on history. It dominated our day, our life, our house! While classical homeschooling is typically history-centric, we were sacrificing other subjects just to drag out history. We also had a point where we were trying to cover 6+ subjects in a day, which meant that we couldn’t put any quality time into each subject. One way we dealt with this was by streamlining the subjects. For example, instead of three or four small language arts segments covering different things (grammar, vocabulary, writing), we switched to Michael Clay Thompson’s language arts curriculum, which integrated or coordinated those areas.

5. What’s popular isn’t always right, but it sometimes is. I probably won’t be buying into Sonlight or Math U See any time soon, no matter how many people sing their praises, but I wish I’d listened to the other parents on the advanced learner/gifted forum sooner. I know that I initially scoffed at how everyone was jumping on board the MCT train…oh, aren’t they trendy? Then I saw a video of Mr. Thompson talking about giftedness and why/how it should be nurtured, and I realized that his curriculum wasn’t popular because it was trendy, but because he had really clued in to some essential elements of giftedness. What other curricula have I dismissed due to its popularity that, in retrospect, I might discover could be a great fit for us. I won’t let a curriculum’s popularity/trendiness keep me from checking it out.

6. Friends in unlikely places. I thought that I’d find my home in the secular homeschooling community. As my many posts about feeling alienated or out of place would indicate, this wasn’t the case. I did, to my surprise, find some wonderful friends in the Christian homeschooling community. Despite vast differences in our personal lives, our specific academic materials, and our spiritual/philosophical beliefs, the many things we do share has given me a true sense of community. I also thought that it would be in the academic homeschooling community that I’d make my friends, but I could several unschoolers among the ranks of my Sisters in Homeschooling. I can’t even list all the wonderful (mostly) women (and a few men) I have encountered in the homeschool community…from all walks of life. In the end, it’s hasn’t been about secular or Christian, classical or unschooling, but about commonality of humor, respect for each other and our children, and a belief that we each want to do what is best for our children. If we don’t have humor as parents and homeschoolers, what do we have?

7. It’s ok to quit the stuff that isn’t working (before you hit crisis/loathing stage). A curriculum isn’t a marriage, right? I’ve had to learn and relearn this one. In October, I wrote about how much we loved Writing Strands and by January, I was writing about how much I disliked it. How many months of that time in between did I force us to keep on with an increasingly incompatible curriculum? I don’t know for sure, but next year, I will give myself permission to quite before I have to write a big dramatic post about how much I hate said curriculum. I promise. This time, I really will.

8. I don’t totally suck at this. Captain Science learned a lot this year. I learned a lot this year. We still like each other. Daddyman and I still like each other. The world hasn’t collapsed, the house hasn’t burned down, and I haven’t had a nervous breakdown. We not only can do this, we ARE doing this! We’re really, truly homeschoolers…and we’re doing just fine.

Ten days, y’all. Ten more freaking days! I’m so excited, I could practically piddle on the rug.

This week, Captain Science went back and redid a few lessons from Paragraph Town using his other reading as the subject matter. He finished (finally, Mr. Dawdler!) reading Wind in the Door and Nordic Gods and Heroes. He completed several sentences in Practice Town.

Officer Daddyman and Captain Science worked together on some algebra word problems of Daddyman’s devising. Captain Science is greatly looking forward to starting Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra, now that he has a little taste of that kind of math. Algebra was always my favorite mathematical subject, so I’m excited about it, too!

Captain Science has advanced to the next set of piano books and continues to show a natural talent for it. He’s working with 8th notes and runs, and is also doing a little jazz, which is fun to hear! Two hours a week is a lot of piano lesson, but I think the time investment is going to pay off in the long run.

Our co-op is about done. Brain class is over (and none too soon, as tempers have been flaring and the last class involved Eclectic Girl calling Captain Science a hoarder, and Captain Science calling Eclectic Girl a stealer, neither of which is true), game class will continue with no foreseeable end, and the short story class will only have one more meeting together. Along with writing, the students have learned about editing, submitting drafts to magazines and journals, and writing contests. I wish Captain Science had been willing to invest more time in working on his story, as I’m having a hard time getting a good full-length draft from him, but he’s not the only one in the class balking at it a bit. I think we’ll take a step back and let him work on it more over the summer.

Physics lab was pretty much the same-ol’, same-ol’. At least Captain Science and Eclectic Girl didn’t squabble, right?

Captain Science did a ton of poetry work this week, since we didn’t get much done in Building Poems last week. He covered limericks, creating his own stanzas, metaphor, simile, apostrophe, and personification this week, writing poems for each topic. The following are his personification and apostrophe poems, which he decided to combine together in this format:

Sun and Moon

I.
The sunlight shines upon the sea
his goal is to light everything.
While lighting up the other side
the moon illuminates the tides.
For many years they battled far,
but now they always share the earth.

II.
O, brightest sun, you hottest light
begins the day and stops the night.
Yet O great moon, your noble rays
shall make much beauty and end the day.
For many aeons you two have fought
but at this time you battle not.

I’m sure you can imagine how proud I am of him!

I haven’t done a weekly update in a while. It felt too much like same-old, same-old.

We have only 15 days left in our school yet, and I won’t be here for the last five of them. Nana will be moderating the final week, while I jet off to Chicago to doula for our most precious and beloved Auntie D, godmother to my children and my best friend of 15+ years.

What have we been up to lately?

Well, Captain Science has reviewed some mathematics, doing a lovely job of demonstrating continued mastery of skills with another pass at the Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents final bridge. He’s also been working on some basic algebra concepts with Officer Daddyman, in preparation for this summer’s foray into algebra. I look forward to starting Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra.

Captain Science has finished Paragraph Town, though we’re going back and redoing a few lessons, using history texts as the writing topics. He’s continued to do work in Practice Town, keeping all those excellent language arts skills fresh in his mind. He’s written several excellent essays lately, including the introduction to a story about a revival of the Roman empire and an essay about Thor. He has also done some work in Building Poems.

History-wise, he has pretty much finished the stack of books on the Vikings, which is good, as they’ll be overdue if we don’t return them soon! He seemed to really enjoy the mythology and learning about longships and raiding parties. This wraps up the history we’re doing this year, as we’ll start ancient history of Asia, Africa, and the Americas in the fall. I want him to add the Norse gods to his pantheon project, which we’ll start wrapping up next week!

Science has continued to be all, you know, scienc-y. They’ve done some physics labs. This week, as Earth Day fell on science lab day, Patchfire had Captain Science and Eclectic Girl calculate their carbon footprint. Captain Science and I talked about ways we could reduce our carbon footprint, using examples like replacing store-bought beef with the locally raised beef we’ve been eating. The brain class is still loads of fun. They’ve made brain hats (a model of the brain to wear on their heads), have watched videos, have done neuron activities and short-term memory activities. Wait, what were we talking about?

Our co-op classes are starting to wind down for the semester. I’ve enjoyed them so much! The writing students are turning in completed drafts for me to edit. We’ve talked about the process of submitting written works to magazines, journals, and contests. The plan is to finish in the next two weeks or so, with submittable manuscripts for all the children. We’ll mail everything off on the last day of class. I hope someone gets something published!

Captain S has also done some work in his logic book and in a few other areas. His co-op board game class has proven to be one of his favorite things. Their food fight game is hilarious!

Wow! I can’t believe we’re almost done for the year. It’s gone by so fast.

Didn’t do a review last week because it really just feels like more of the same: language arts, language arts, a little science, language arts. This week isn’t significantly different from that, but I didn’t want people to think we’d flat out stopped homeschooling! We’re just hyperfocusing on some areas right now, is all.

Captain Science has finished lessons 7-14 in Paragraph Town (he was convinced he’d finished the book, because he ran out of reading, but nope, 10 lessons left, pal). He is writing many essays about varied topics, some of the essays better than others. Lots of dawdling and tail-dragging, but he’s demonstrating better use of active verbs now and a fine use of structure.

He completed chapters 7, 8, 9 of Caesar’s English and then for some strange reason skipped to lesson 12 by mistaken, when he was assigned lesson 10. We’ll go back and do 11 & 12 next week. He’s made 100% on all the quizzes, but vocabulary have never been his week area. I’m pleased that his rewrites are becoming more nuanced. He’s no longer just replacing the vocabulary word with a simpler word, but actually rewriting the whole sentence into “plain English” (sort of a silly notion, since we use many of the vocabulary words in our normal conversations — we’re all writers here). He keeps asking when we’ll start Latin and was disappointed that I’d decided to delay it until next year, but I think that’s a wise choice.

Captain Science wrote some poems for his continuing lessons in meter from Building Poetry. I hope to sneak another lesson in tonight, so I’ll post those if we do.

I confess I have no clue what’s going on with science right now. Daddyman did the drop-off this week for physics and Captain Science hasn’t been bothered to tell me what they’re working on. I handled last week’s brain class (due to Patchfire’s FB’s birthday) and it was canceled this week (due to Patchfire’s migraine). Instead, the game class was extended for playtesting, which went much better this week (someone got kicked, but no tears were shed) than last week (someone *coughCaptainSciencecough* pitched a crying fit because he was knocked out of play in the first round).

We are getting back into history this week, too. On Monday, we went to the library and checked out a ton of books on vikings. Captain Science has already finished most of them and is staring on a book of Norse mythology. Wait, the use of the word “mythology” doesn’t offend my Nordic-pagan friends, does it? Norse religious stories, then.

Captain Science continues to progress well in piano. He’s starting new books soon. He also began keyboard this week, which will supplement his piano lessons and allow for duets.

I think it’s been a series of weeks where I feel like we’ve accomplished nothing, but the actual volume of work (and written output) is quite staggering!

I didn’t die from pneumonia, so I was able to return to schooling this week! With the completion of this week, we’ve done 140 days of school, so only 40 days left to go to meet our required number of days for our first year of homeschooling.

While we wait for our next set of math books, we’re taking a brief math break and doing a language arts-intensive week or two. Captain Science completed chapters 5 & 6 in Caesar’s English 1. We went back and reviewed the sections on appositive and gerunds/ gerund phrases in Paragraph Town (lessons 4 and 5), then lesson 6 (on clear paragraph topics). He also continued working in Building Poems, learning about meter and feet. He read through his Shel Silverstein poetry books and identified exampls of iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapest. We also discussed different meters and clapped out the rhythm. I’m pretty sure he did some work in Practice Town, but I’m not the one who went over that work, as I wasn’t feeling great, so I’m not sure exactly which sentences he did! Finally, he read Wrinkle in Time for his literature and discussed it with my mother (since we were still over at her house for part of the week). He’s become interested in tesseracts, so we’re going to do some research on that.

We had co-op for the first time after a 2-weeks break. The game class is going to start playtesting a simple version of their food fight game next week. The Brain class students performed an “MRI” on an orange (with raisin and cranberry “tumors”) and made neurons from marshmallows and rope licorice, along w/ their written work. My writing students starting working on dialog vs. exposition, when to “show” and when to “tell,” and are supposed to spend this week writing 10-20 minutes a day and keeping a log of it, in order to develop the habit of regular writing.

Captain Science and Eclectic Girl worked on labs on friction at Patchfire’s house this week for physics. Captain Science had some trouble making sense of one part of the lab setup, but luckily, EG was able to make sense of it. They seem to alternate taking the lead on the physics labs now (or at least, on being the first one to figure out the lab setup), which is an improvement over the previous units, where Captain Science mostly let EG do the thinking. I’m glad he appreciates this smart young woman’s leadership qualities, but I don’t want him slacking off because of it.

The Tank had his “Green Patrick’s Day” party at school and Babypie is gearing up to turn one on the 27th! I’m beginning to prepare our work for next year, including projecting WAY ahead to the end of the year, when EG and Captain Science both start the middle ages and I guide them through an awesome unit study (hopefully EG will be able to be involved in this, *stern look at Patchfire*), where they’ll choose a favorite time period and do extensive research into it, developing a persona (yes, sorta of like in the SCA) and learning what their persona’s life would have been like — what sort of education would they have had? What mathematical and scientific beliefs were in that time period? What foods were eaten? What clothing was worn? What was the political status of their nation and the world? We’ll make clothing, taste the foods, and try our best to attend a local historical recreation event! Only have, you know, 9+ months until we can work on that.

This week started with academics and ended with the flu, so we didn’t get much done this week.

The highlight of the week was Captain Science finishing Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents on Wednesday. We’re going to kill a little time w/ some other types of math, then get the next books on payday. If only we could buy them locally!

The lowlight was that we’re still butting heads over history writing. I need to find a way to get us back on track w/ that, but can’t really figure out how. We’ve pretty much wrapped up pre-Roman, Roman-era, and post-Roman Britain, so after we’re back from our field trip/vacation, we’re starting w/ the Vikings, I think. Need to plot my lesson plan out a little more carefully and try to find ways of making writing more enticing.

Captain Science got 100% on his next review quiz of Caesar’s English. No writing or poetry this week, because of the flu.

Co-op was canceled on account of snow. Seriously! Snow! That’s twice this year (for the snow, not the co-op cancelation).

There really isn’t all that much else to report. We’re off on our field trip this weekend, so I’m looking forward to reporting back on Captain Science’s exciting education about MMORPG design!